


Classic Max

by MagicalDragon



Category: Happy Endings (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, HIV/AIDS, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-24 22:10:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19732771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagicalDragon/pseuds/MagicalDragon
Summary: “Hey Max, we’re in the middle of lunch, can I just-”“Don’t you dare hang up on me!” Max yelled, going for demanding but coming off a bit desperate.“Hey, okay, what’s happening?” Brad asked, his tone more serious.“I just need you to come over, okay!” Max said. “I’ll explain, I just… Fuck, I just need you right now Brad, okay?”





	Classic Max

“Fuck,” Max said as he clumsily went through his phone contacts. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck…” He kept mumbling as the dialing tone rang in his ear, the word getting spat out faster and more vehemently with every repetition, as if getting enough repetitions out would change things. 

Max stopped in the middle of yet another “fuck” when he heard Brad’s voice. 

“Brad, listen, I need you to come over-” 

“Hey Max, we’re in the middle of lunch, can I just-”

“Don’t you dare hang up on me!” Max yelled, going for demanding but coming off a bit desperate. 

“Hey, okay, what’s happening?” Brad asked, his tone more serious. 

“I just need you to come over, okay!” Max said. “I’ll explain, I just… Fuck, I just need you right now Brad, okay?” 

The line was silent for a moment. 

“Okay,” Brad said firmly. 

It felt like hours before Brad showed up. Perhaps it was because Max knew every minute counted when in this situation, or perhaps it was just because he had nothing to do but pace around his apartment, but either way, it was agony.

He had told Brad he’d explain. He’d have to, if he didn’t want to go alone. And he didn’t. Perhaps he should have. He’d have gotten there sooner. It was better to get there sooner, right? The sooner, the more likely it would work. He should just have gotten his shit together and gone to the clinic the moment he got that text. Now he had to tell Brad about it. Fuck. Why did he do that? He would never think about him the same way again. Everyone knew Max was reckless, but this?

Maybe he should have called Derrick. Kept it within the family, as it were. But he didn’t know Derrick the way he knew Brad. 

By the time Brad let himself in to Max’s apartment (Jane had insisted on making a few copies and keeping them safe for him after the third time Max had lost his keys), he had almost convinced himself to just leave on his own, fight his way through it and shoot Brad some shitty text making it all out like it had been some kind of prank or joke. 

But now Brad was here. 

“Hey,” Brad said softly. 

It was clear he was worried.

It was also clear he had no idea why he ought to be beyond Max’s strange behavior.

Fuck. 

“Hey,” Max said, shooting for nonchalant and almost hitting it. 

“So…?” Brad said and sat down on Max’s couch.

“So…” Max said and finally stopped pacing to throw himself down beside him. 

Silence fell between them, in an suffocating way it normally never did. 

Brad put an arm around Max’s shoulder and began: 

“Max, whatever-”

But Max quickly disentangled himself from Brad and interrupted him.

“Fuck, okay…. So I went home with this guy last night, right? And it was fun, we had fun. Didn’t really think much about it. We exchanged numbers; he’s pretty sexy, might have called him again at some point, but not date material or anything. Anyway, so…. fuck me…”

Max ran a hand through his hair, then got up from the couch and started pacing again. 

“The long and the short of it is that this guy sent me a text and apparently I might have been exposed to HIV and uh, yeah, fuck.”

“Max…” Brad began, but again, he was interrupted.

“Don’t “Max” me right now, alright? I know I’m an idiot. We’ve been looking for my gay stereotype all this time and I guess we just found it!” 

“You’re not an idiot.”

“Don’t patronize me, of course I am. Silly Max, fucking up again, what new problem has he created this time! This wouldn’t even be a problem if we’d just used a condom, like come on, Max, I don’t care how drunk you were, that’s step one, bro! I mean, I should probably still ask a doctor about it either way, but I wouldn’t be so fucking scared! Shit!” 

Max had been getting more and more agitated and he’d almost forgotten he wasn’t just talking to himself when Brad took hold of his shoulders and made him meet his eyes. 

“This is not your fault. These things happen. Do you think I used a condom every time before I met Jane? No. So don’t put this on yourself.”

Max laughed sarcastically, a slightly hysteric edge to the sound. 

“Yeah, well, most of your community wasn’t wiped out by this like 20 years ago…!”

“Max…” Brad sighed. “This is scary. This is scary as all hell. I get that. But blaming yourself doesn’t help. Arguing with me doesn’t help. Medicine helps. And we’ll go get it for you and hopefully that will be all we have to do. That’s probably it. But even if it isn’t, you’re _not_ going to die. Even if worst comes to worst, you’ll be alright. I promise you. And I’ll be with you all the way. You know that, bro.”

Max swallowed something and looked away, occupied in a fight with his own face. 

“Also, not that this is at all the point, but you do realise how many black men died of it, right?” Brad added. “Straight black men,” he corrected. “Obviously you get that a lot of black gay dudes did.” 

“And trans women…” Max added, having, at least momentarily, won over his tear ducts. 

“Them too,” Brad agreed. 

Max sighed and walked out of Brad’s grip. 

“Whatever. Let’s just get to the clinic. You’re driving.”

For a moment, Brad looked like he was about to say something else, but in the end all he said was: 

“Of course I’m driving.”

The waiting room was agony. Any waiting was agony for Max, really, but this… it had been a long time since Max felt small and wrong and as if everyone around him could, at a glance, know everything he didn’t want them to. He’d never really been bullied for being gay in school - he hadn’t known and neither had anyone else - but his early college years had been plagued by the sort of uneasy self-consciousness that scratches at you from under your skin and demands you pay close attention to every little look, every little move, everything that is said, and uses it to eat away at you. 

And that was how Max felt in that waiting room. 

Max was obviously agitated, wringing his hands and bouncing his legs, so not all the looks he got were imaginary. Brad definitely kept sending him worried looks that Max studiously ignored. He’d never been so fascinated by his knuckles before. 

The weird thing was, Max had wanted Brad here, and he wasn’t even sure he could have sat here on his own without bolting, and yet... Brad’s presence felt simultaneously almost unbearable. He’d been nice and supportive, of course he had. Brad always was. More than any of his friends, he was consistent that way. But he was almost too nice. Max almost wanted him to yell at him, to tell him all the things Max was telling himself. Maybe Penny would have been more likely to. But Penny would have freaked almost as much as Max himself. He needed steady and consistent right now. 

“Max Blum?” A nurse called out and Max took in a quick breath. 

Brad squeezed his shoulder firmly and Max somehow found it in himself to get up and follow the nurse. 

Max was gone for awhile. An explanation, a risk assessment consisting of truly agonizing questions (no-one should ever have to talk about their sex positions to a doctor. Seriously. Unless they were dating that doctor), an HIV test (negative - but then, that was only to test he hadn’t fucked up _already,_ prior to this whole mess) and a bag full of PEP medicine enough for 28 days later, Max was back in the waiting room. 

“So?” Brad said when they were walking out.

Max wordlessly showed the pills at him. Brad took one up from the bag and looked the description over. He whistled.

“These have some _pre-t-t-y_ nasty side effects,” he said.

“Yeah, bro, it’s basically HIV meds,” Max said, somehow sounding more like himself now, though he didn’t feel it - if anything, he felt further away. 

“I’m sorry, bro,” Brad said.

Max rolled his eyes. 

“Spare me the saint act.”

“You’re my friend and I _am_ sorry and I’ll be nice to you if I goddamn want to,” Brad said. 

Max sent him an unimpressed look. 

Once they were back in the apartment, Max took the first of his medicine and was almost forced to lie down on his bed by a Brad-turned-mother-hen. 

“Okay, I’m just going to call Jane and explain-”

“No,” Max exclaimed and shot up from the bed. 

“What?”

“You can’t tell anyone,” Max said. “I’m serious, this stays between us.”

“Max, this is really serious."

“Oh, _is it_?”

“Your friends need to know!”

“No they don’t.”

“You need to let people take care of you!”

“No!” Max shouted and stood up. “I don’t want anyone else to know! That’s not your decision to make!” 

There was that odd silence between them again. 

“I don’t care a lot what people think about me, but I refuse to be the gay guy who had to take HIV medicine because he was careless.”

“Max, no-one would judge you,” Brad implored. 

Max just shook his head and sat back down.

“You don’t get it…”

“You’re right, I don’t,” Brad said and went to sit beside him. “I want to, I really do. And I want to respect your wishes. I just don’t know how I’ll keep this from Jane.”

“Oh come on, half of our hijinks are about you hiding something from Jane,” Max dismissed.

“Yeah, and how well do those usually go?” 

Max rolled his eyes.

“Okay, listen… what’s the first thing people say when you’re gay?”

Brad had a look on his face giving the distinct impression that he felt like he was walking into a trap.

“You don’t get into heaven…?” He suggested meekly. 

“Well, that, too, but Jewish heaven doesn’t work like that, so I don’t care about that… no, bro; it’s unnatural and you’ll get sick! That’s what people say. As well as like schoolyard shit: haha, you’re gay, go die of AIDS!” 

“I don’t remember ever hearing that in a schoolyard,” Brad said.

“You’re straight so you don’t remember,” Max said.

Brad made a face as if to say “fair enough.”

“I mean, how well I remembered stuff like that should probably have been an indication I wasn’t straight in the first place, but hey, denial is a lot of fun.”

“I still don’t know what to tell Jane,” Brad said. “I could tell her you have the flu, but then she’d insist on coming over here to take care of you herself and make you this Serbian soup she insists cures all disease which it, by the way, definitely does not.”

Max sighed loudly.

“Okay fine you can tell Jane!” He breathed out. “But she’s not coming over, she’s not sending me sympathetic texts, she’s not bringing it up with me and she’s definitely not giving me Serbian soup.”

“Alright,” Brad said. “Alright, we can do that. And you’re sure you don’t want anyone else to know? Penny is like your straight soulmate.”

“Which is exactly why she shouldn’t know.” 

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Just don’t tell anyone else.”

“Okay, I promise. Only Jane. And only so she knows I’m helping you out and we’re not having an illicit gay affair for her to kill me over.”

“Is that something she would think?” Max asked skeptically. 

Brad shrugged. 

“She could.”

"So get this," Brad said once he had finished his phone conversation with Jane, "Penny told a guy she’s seeing that she's really into foreign cinema so Jane and her have been cooped up watching French movies since I left."

Brad sat down next to Max and, sensing his apprehension, added:

"She'd fallen asleep to _Breathless_ by the time I called."

"Hah!" Max said. "Classic Pen."

“How does she get in these situations?” Brad laughed. 

Max laughed too and asked:

“So how long’s she got?” 

“Their next date is tomorrow evening, so I guess she can make it through a fair number of movies.” 

“Not if she keeps falling asleep, she can’t!” Max exclaimed and both of them laughed again.

“Ah, classic Penny,” they said in unison once they’d finished laughing. 

They kept bantering back and forth a bit, Brad clearly doing his foremost to make Max feel like this was a day like any other and not a day where Max had had to talk a sexual encounter through with a doctor. It worked, sort of, until Max slowly, then all at once, felt violently nauseous. He sprang out of his bed and ran unsteadily to the bathroom where he just managed to reach the toilet before he threw up.

It took quite a while, but finally Max felt he could leave without too great a risk of throwing up somewhere else. He hadn’t noticed Brad walking after him, but he was stood right outside the bathroom and looked like he wanted to guide Max back to his bed as if he really was dying. Max sent him one warning look, before walking past him and back to his bed. To his mild, distant surprise, Brad didn’t follow, but instead disappeared into the bathroom. 

Max crawled back into his bed and thought of very little till Brad reappeared and put down a bucket Max used for cleaning – on the few occasions Max did any – next to Max’s bed.

“Ugh, I might as well have the flu,” Max complained. 

“Sure you don’t want that Serbian soup?”

“Fuck you.”

“In all seriousness, I asked Jane to bring a few of my things over so I can stay the night. Do you think you could eat something if she brought something along?”

“Eating it wouldn’t be the problem,” Max mumbled sullenly. 

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Brad said and went to call his wife again. 

The next two days were pretty rough for Max, but after that, his body and the medication seemed to have brokered some kind of truce because Max only felt occasional bouts of nausea. Brad kept insisting on staying, but Max finally got rid of him on the fourth day and by the fifth, he was more or less back to his normal life. Apart from having something he needed to remember twice a day. 

“Max!” Penny squealed when she saw him walk in to their usual brunch place on the sixth day. “Oh my god Max, I can’t believe you missed this, I basically almost _died_ the other day!”

“What?!” Max exclaimed.

Penny sent him an odd look at his earnest reaction, but then proceeded directly into her anecdote: 

“So I was on a date with this ah-mah-zing guy Will, right? But he’s like, totally into old foreign films and modern theater and all of that. So I’d been brushing up on my French New Wave and my Italian Neo-Something and all of that boring stuff, right? And I actually manage to impress him, he’s sooooo happy he’s met another cinephile who, and I quote “appreciates real art”,” and here Penny paused to leave plenty of emphasis for her air quotes, “so he took me to this super weird modern play where the actors would just walk up and talk to you, and I swear, one of these actors was like, obsessed with me. And at one point he gets all up in my face with a knife, right? So I freak out and yell and get up and walk out of the theatre but then like, Will walks after me to yell at me for not appreciating the artistry of it and I’m like okay, did you not see what just happened? It was so crazy.”

“Where do you find these people?” Brad asked. 

Penny shrugged:

“I met him on OkCupid.”

“Ah,” the whole rest of the group exclaimed in understanding. 

“You guys, it’s not just weirdos!” Penny protested. 

“Isn’t it, though?” Max said. 

“Oh, shut up, you weren’t even here.”

“Yeah, that must have been some flu, bud,” Dave said. “Glad to see you’re better.”

Jane and Brad shot each other a look, but Max was pretty sure he was the only one who noticed. 

“Yeah, bro,” Max said. “Pretty nasty. Like the other day I thought I was healthy again so I wanted to go out but then halfway there it’s just all coming back to me; I’m sneezing, I’m sniveling, I’m nauseous; all of it. So then I end up just throwing up in this flower pot next to that clothes store Jane likes.” 

There was collective groan of disgust from the group before it turned into laughter.

“Classic Max,” someone said.

And all was as it used to be.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sensitive subject and I've done my best to approach it as such. If I in some way haven't, please feel free to tell me so


End file.
